“The Other Death Penalty”

That’s how this organization describes LWOP, or life without the possibility of parole. (New Mexico governor Bill Richardson has used the phrase “worse than death“.) In a press release today, The Other Death Penalty Project announces a nationwide letter-writing campaign urging death penalty abolitionist groups

to stop advocating for life without the possibility of parole as a supposedly humane alternative to lethal injection.

The Other Death Penalty Project, a group comprised solely of prisoners serving life without possibility of parole — the other death penalty — categorically rejects this hypocritical position taken by too many death penalty abolitionists. Death at the hands of the state, whether by lethal injection or lethal imprisonment, is the death penalty.

The Other Death Penalty Project, similarly, rejects the proposition that life without the possibility of parole is a necessary first step toward ultimate abolition of the death penalty. The distinction is one of method, not kind. Instead of moving to the elimination of death sentences, this tactic of trading slow executions for quick executions has resulted in an explosion of men and women sentenced to the slower method.